What Silicon Valley's Top VCs Want in an AI Founder Right Now | Meridian, John Ling

John Ling, co-founder and CEO of Meridian, shares his journey from finance and consulting to building an AI-powered spreadsheet tool backed by Andreessen Horowitz with $15M raised. He discusses how deep immersion in LLM technology at Scale AI shaped his conviction that AI can transform spreadsheet workflows the same way coding tools transformed software development. He argues that no one has truly invested thousands of hours applying AI to financial modeling, creating a major opportunity. Key themes include learning by doing, first-principles thinking, the value of prompting skills, and building a culture that tolerates experimentation and failure.